(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for configuring resources of a random access channel in a wireless communication system, and more particularly to, a method and apparatus for configuring frequency domain resources of a random access channel in a wireless communication system.
(b) Description of the Related Art
In a wireless communication system, a random access process is performed between a terminal and a base station for initial timing synchronization and power control, uplink resource request, handover, etc.
A random access channel is used as an uplink control channel for transmitting/receiving a preamble between the terminal and the base station during the random access process. The uplink control channel allocated to a radio frame in order to transmit the preamble for the purpose of random access is the random access channel. The random access channel is referred to as a PRACH (physical random access channel).
When a transmission mode of the wireless communication system is a TDD (time division duplex) method, a plurality of PRACHs may be allocated to uplink subframes according to uplink and downlink frame configurations. In this regard, when a PRACH configuration density is not multiplexed through a subframe index in a single uplink subframe that is a time domain due to lack in time domain resources including uplink subframes, on the assumption that PRACHs are not overlapped, a plurality of PRACHs may be multiplexed and included on a frequency domain.
When the plurality of PRACHs are included on the frequency domain, radio resources blocks to which the plurality of PRACHs are allocated are determined. In this regard, there is a need for an effective method of determining the radio resource blocks to which the plurality of PRACHs are to be allocated. For example, radio resource block holes having a small size may be generated according to a layout of a plurality of PRACHs in available radio resource blocks. If the radio resource block holes are generated, since PRACHs may not be continuously allocated to the radio resource blocks in a data traffic transmission, it is difficult to efficiently operate radio resources. In addition, in a case of PRACHs having the same number as that of adjacent cells and having the same TDD frame structure, interference between the PRACHs of the adjacent cells may occur, and accordingly, the terminal may fail random access.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.